In America we have Christian movements. But the Christian political parties are non-existent; they work quietly inside of the Republican and Democratic Parties. That because our government made a deal with them. They are allowed to be tax exempt only if they do not run political parties. A little bit of that separation of State and religion.

In Germany the Christians or mainly Germany’s Roman Catholic population controlled the Center Party. The Protestants stayed away from the Center Party. And it was this battle for political power that opened the door for groups like the Nazi Party.

The Nazi’s were not a religious movement, just a political party; therefore the Center Party did not look at the Nazis as having any strength behind them.

The Nazis started out as a political movement, just like the Zionist today. Nothing got done in Germany unless it had the backing of the Christian coalition. It is still that way today in Germany. These political alliances go back to the beginning of the Nazi Party. In other words, if the Christian political parties did not want the Nazi Party to exist, they would have been gone.

After WWI , hyper inflation hit Germany. A lifetime’s retirement savings for a worker could only buy a cup or two of coffee. In a 10 month period the US Dollar went from 4 Marks to the Dollar to 4.2 billion Marks to the Dollar.

The greatest movement of wealth at that time in history was the money from the United States to Germany. The Dawes & Young Loans of 1924-30, over $2B went to Germany.

And not without strings attached.
Many items the US made Germany comply with to get the loans went against the churches and governments management ways of Germany. I’ll list a couple big ones.
1. Germany had to implement communist reforms in the workplace in that the labor unions had to be managed by the workers and not the company.
2. Overtime for men only, after 40 hours of work in a week, another communist idea.
3. Germany had to outlaw slavery all together in Germany, against the churches thinking.
4. Germany had to move the banking system to the private sector like in the United States.
5. No citizen was bound to disclose his religious convictions to the government.

Some of the money we loaned to the German Government went directly to the churches.
And there were a few loans made directly to the German churches. For example;
St. Petri Church, Bremen 1926
Beuron Benedictine Monastery
Protestant Church (Welfare Inst) 1926 $5M
Roman Catholic Church in Bavaria 1926 $5M
Roman Catholic Church Welfare Institution in Germany 1926 $6M

In reading the conditions of the loans to the churches I was surprised that the loans were backed by the churches ability to tax the people. If needed to pay the bonds the churches had the ability to raise the taxes on the people under their tax authority by up to 10 percent of their income for just the payment on the bonds.

How could this be?
In Germany the Churches are allowed to employ civil servants and to levy taxes on its members and to directly collect the tax. In other words Germany is sharing its sovereignty with the Churches. Today two-thirds of Germany’s population pays the church tax. And today other groups are allowed to charge a tax. Like Jewish synagogues, the Salvation Army, the Latter Day Saints, and the German Humanist Association. These taxes are deducted against the Federal income tax. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, German Humanist charging a church tax.

Point being that the churches and state was intertwined.

Now back to the topic, the first power move by the German Government (the Nazi party and the Christian Churches) was to take back the control of the independent banking system the US required Germany to setup. If the Christian Churches did not want the Nazi Party to take the banking back, Hitler would of never had enough power to do it on their own and without the banking he could not have started WWII.

History tells us that the Church Tax was use in the U.S., George Washington and others backed the tax. It was people like Thomas Jefferson that repelled the tax. Then other colonies followed, some took a long time to change.

It is my option that the German Churches were afraid to oppose the Nazi Party for fear of losing its tax system. I think the churches always knew what was going on in Germany. They were to much involve in management and political issues not to know.

And the number of Christians did not go down because of the Nazi Political Party, so most of the Nazi’s were most likely Christians.

Point Being – Let’s keep the churches out of the political offices and elections in the U.S.

Well that’s a lot to consider. One thing that does ring true though is how what you’ve said ties into the general feeling in the US at the time that we should stay out of WW2. I’ve always thought, seeing as how rampant anti-Semitism was in the US, especially given how Christian the country was back then, I always thought citizens wanted to stay out because they secretly agreed with Hitler and the Nazi ideology. I mean there’s a reason Nazism and Fascism are refered to as “right wing” ideologies.

One of my pet peeves is the tax exemptions for charities, churches, etc. My town seems to have a church on every corner - probably at least 10 times as much capacity as we need.

Our tax system would be much simpler an fairer if there were no tax exemptions for anyone. Everyone, individuals and businesses would pay a percentage of their income, earned and unearned, on an individual basis with no exemptions allowed for any reason. The majority of people would wind up paying less because the wealthy and connected would be unable to find loopholes and avoid paying their fair share. Problem is nobody in Congress or the White House wants it to be fair. They all want to be able to give themselves and their cronies an advantage. So we wind up with a royal mess that gets more and more complicated and unfair to most people—especially the ones who struggle to make ends meet. It seems that politicians have figured out a perfect way to get and maintain an advantage for the rich and powerful: make it as complicated as possible so no one knows who is paying what and there are plenty of loopholes for the well connected.

The problem is that congresscritters and senators on both sides of the aisle are fairly wealthy themselves and they also, without exception, owe their positions to various special interests which financed their elections with massive donations.

With the exception of a few idealists (And they do exist) they’re not about to vote for any sort of tax system where they screw themselves over.

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Question authority and think for yourself. Big Brother does not know best and never has.

I completely agree with your proposal, Lois - A flat tax with absolutely no deductions, however, I would exempt the first, say, $50,000 of earnings as that required for a minimum adequate life. The taxable amount would include all income including wages, interest, dividends, profits, hedge fund gimmicks, inheritances, over-seas income, etc.

The problem isn’t high taxation, it’s where the money goes. Predators in most of the old empires figured out how to tax the citizens then drain the treasuries, or how to tax the average citizens while giving those at the top a free ride. We are seeing both of these beginning here. We have many subsidies and tax reliefs to large companies and exemptions for those at the higher end of income earning.

If we got rid of those and put the money into public education, transportation, health care, etc. our country could function more efficiently and effectively.

In addition if we set decent minimum wages, we’d have a much more functional consumer market which would increase purchasing and lead to more hiring to produce those items. In other words, no recession and a growing, not shrinking, middle class.

Much of the first part of your post describes the consequences of nations who wish to solve their problems through war. Either they succeed, or they pay war reparations
which are inherited by their descendants. As well as post war Germany, the world was in the grips of financial trouble also, much of it due to paying back expenses of fighting a rogue nation in WW1. So yes it experienced an added burden.

The solution as always is to collectively nip temptation in the bud, and say “this is madness!”, then resort to diplomatic means. It is ludicrous to think that a world would not come to the plight of a nation in trouble, if not immediately, later. All nations are confined on this globe, and whatever one nation or collection of them will feel, we are all dependent and affected by the ills that plague other nations. Their is a recognized ingrained law within our world that extends a helping hand.

When more instruments of destruction are made, proportionally the more society feels it is the means to the end, and as well, the less diplomacy is seen as a solution.

So in Germany’s case, it already agreed that the gamble was worth it. So it is receiving one of the consequences of it’s decisions. It should be glad that it receives one
of the options it saw as worth it.

Scape goats abound, and using Christianity as a cause is also ludicrous. There are more stories of Catholic heroes than there are of negative stories.